memo to NCIS:LA

Putting Kenzie in a ponytail, hoop earrings, and sweatpants does not make her Mexican. Neither does her accent. This is an amazing amount of racefail, wow.

("Didn't we used to have a blog where we can complain about this?"
"That is literally all we used that blog for.")

ETA:

Show: "It could be an audio file, a thumb drive or MP3 player, or a CD ROM."
Becky: "Probably not a CD ROM, since this show doesn't take place in 1995."
Rachel: "Maybe the protected files are an AOL installation."

KORRA KORRA KORRA KORRA KORRA

"You know what Korra doesn't do real well?"
"Is it wait patiently?"

So when the terrible, terrible movie of Avatar: The Last Airbender was announced, I (like everyone else) got curious and watched the tv show. AND IT WAS SO GOOD. And then Rachel rolled her eyes and was so not into it, until I kind of accidentally watched it for 14 hours in a row on Thanksgiving and she cared against her will, because the fact of the matter is that A:TLA was amazing. It's so well put together that it can pull in basically any skeptic.

Obviously my favorite character is Zuko, because hi, troubled anti-hero with a heart of gold and so many feeeeeeeeeelings. That is kind of my favorite things. But if A:TLA had been around when I was 12 (which I suppose is actually the target audience), my absolute favorite would have been Toph. A seriously badass 14-year-old who yells things like "I'M THE GREATEST EARTH BENDER OF ALL TIME!" and is RIGHT, who can basically beat up everyone and take out a hundred thugs at once, who'd blind but still better able to take care of herself in a fight than anyone else, who's got anger issues but occasional flashes of real insight, and basically WHO IS AWESOME.

So when the creators announced they were doing a sequel series, about an avatar who's a teenage girl who's aggressive and impatient but phenomenally talented, who's basically a super hero in training, set in a world that's a steampunk take on Beijing with jazz-Chinese fusion music, where pro-bending is the sport of choice, and her animal companion is a polar bear-dog, and she wants to help people an do good but accidentally busts shit up, and she's got a wise but harried mentor and some fun kid sidekicks and makes friends with some brothers who include well-meaning comic relief and troubled and brooding and and and and and

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE AND I WANT THE WHOLE THING RIGHT NOOOOOW I DON'T WANT TO WAIT A WEEK I'M IMPATIENT LIKE KORRA AND THIS IS ALL SO GREAT OMG IT IS THE BEST

NCIS (LA)

NCIS:LA, I am the only person under 50 watching the Gay Adventures of Robin and LL Cool J, and there are a LOT of things wrong with your show.

Bringing back that character that everyone hated and no one missed is NOT a good way to go about solving them. He's the Deana Troi of this show, pls don't bring him back.

Also tech!Willow's hair is getting worse and worse. LOOK IN TO THAT.

shut up, ben, just shut up, if you don't pick kacie b you don't deserve love

I am very sorry, but I have been watching the Bachelor, and the dates-as-metaphors is out of control.

"With every step we take up this Mayan Temple on our date, I feel we are literally taking a step forward in our relationship."

"You have to jump into a relationship! So we're jumping off the side of this boat into the ocean!"

"You have to face your fears in relationships and just dive in, so we're diving with sharks."

NO. REALLY. THAT WAS A DATE. THEY DOVE WITH SHARKS TO FACE THEIR FEARS, I CAN'T EVEN.

The worst part is they missed the best joke ever. At one point they jumped into a giant cave! BEN JUMPED INTO A GIANT CAVE.  Seriously, if the steps are a step forward and the sharks represent facing your fears, I can only imagine what the giant cave represents on Ben's list of relationship problems.

The Vampire Diaries "Dangerous Liasons"

"Klaus's crush on Stefan remains my favorite part of the Vampire Diaries seasons 2 and 3. He just wants a boyfriend, you guys! All the murder is incidental! He doesn't know any other way to find love!!!"

"I want to watch a TV show about the Originals. They can live in a house and have wacky hijinx and murder the gardener or something."

Ru Paul's Drag Race 4x02

Rick Fox: "She was going for Sex in the City but it was more like Sex in an Alley."

RuPaul: "Oh! Well. I wouldn't turn that down, either."

Rachel: "I love when someone startles RuPaul."

Becky: "But Ru is so fast on her feet. ...on his feet? Ru is so fast on Ru's feet."

Rachel: "There is no pronoun great enough for RuPaul." 

The Vampire Diaries "Dangerous Liasons"

Holy hell a lot of shit went down this week, didn't it? Even for TVD. I am boggled.

NCIS: LA

I haven't really been paying attention to this episode, but looked up just in time to see Girl-Who-Wishes-She-Were-Willow explaining, "Suddenly I'm seeing all sorts of blog sites about (Suspect Lady)! It's like someone's doing a massive upload to the net!" Which a) anyone who works with computers would not use the phrase "blog site," and b) I can suss out the meaning, but that's not what a massive upload to the net is.

Then she loaded an image, which, from drama's sake, appeared from the bottom up to slowly reveal the face, instead of top down, like, you know, every actual browser in existence.

I realize none of this is any more ridiculous than anything else on the show, but still, really???

Ru Paul's Drag Race 4x01

AMAZING. I am 100% in for the Rupocalypse this year. None of these queens are on Raja's level but who could be? I'm hoping some of the trashy nonsense and horrible fashion will go away and they'll start really showing what they can do, but in the meantime I love that this show exists. Someone needs to be a better Tyra than Tyra, and Ru is just the man for the job.

White Collar 3x12

I kind of forgot to watch this show at all somewhere in the second season and then was pretty meh about getting back into it, but hey, it was on the DVR and nothing was on TV tonight. And I had forgotten: this show is utterly ridiculous, but also delightful. Ridiculightful!

Plusses:
* Matt Bomer's A++ face (why isn't he playing Superman?)
* All of the characters. Neal is fun and adorable (fundorable?), Peter is upstanding but wry, El is great, Mozzie is great, Diana is great. Everyone is great!
* Random scruffy high schooler: he was a little too orange, but was appropriately awkward and endearing.
* Surprise Elizabeth Gillies! She plays the mean girl on Victorious (which makes "mean girl" a relative phrase, they're ALL AWFUL, but she's awful intentionally) and even though I hate Victorious, I enjoy all of the cast members and so I'm pleased to see her getting work on something NON awful. Huzzah!

Anyway. Basically, after all of the "is Neal going to betray Peter???" nonsense that made me roll my eyes and lose interest, this episode was a nice palate cleanser that made me want to start watching again. Well played, White Collar.

And seriously. A++ face, Matt Bomer.

Season 5 of Friends

I forgot, because the end of the series got so schmaltzy and every episode was Very Special, that at one point Friends was really funny. Season 5 is the one that starts with Ross's wedding in England falling apart. It's also the one where Monica and Chandler start hooking up and sneaking around and it's FANTASTIC.

Revenge

When did Nolan become one of my favorite characters? Hmm. Not in the first episode, when he seemed vaguely douchey toward Emily, but somewhere in 2 or 3 when it was clear he was kind of a dork who was super excited about helping her get REVENGE. (You must always shout REVENGE!!! preferably while shaking your fist at the sky. God, I love this show.)

Here is a great article on the clothing choices the show has made for Nolan and why they are amazing. I'm so glad they didn't dress him like Mark Zuckerberg just because he's a dot-com billionaire. (Although does he ever go to work? Or shareholders meetings? Or design software, or what have you? He seems to just hang out in the Hamptons hooking up with people for REVENGE!!!!  PS, dear show: please give him a grudge against Zuckerberg and a REVENGE!!!!!!!! plot of his own.)

Project Runway

I have officially broken up with this show. I loved you, Jay and Austin and Mondo and Santino and Tim Gunn, I loved you MOST OF ALL. :( But this finale was bullshit and it was obviously bullshit from very beginning.

I will never trust this show again.

NCIS (LA)

"Sam? That guy's name is Sam?"

"We've been watching this show for two years."

"And I don't know anyone's name! Well. Deeks. And Kenzie. And LL Cool J. And Robin."

"LL Cool J's name is Sam."

"...LL Cool Sam?"

"Sam Cool J?"

"This episode is weird. Was LL Cool Sam like 'I can juggle and do card tricks! Put it in the episode or I quit!!!'?"

"Apparently."

"Does that girl have a name besides 'Wishes She Was Willow From Buffy?'"

"Yeah, but I forget what it is. There was an episode where she and Eric--"

"WAIT, WHO IS ERIC?"

"Headphones guy."

"Oh, Glasses McPlaidShirt?"

"We've been watching this show for two years."

"Yeah, it's not very good."

NCIS (original flavor)

This is the dumbest episode of NCIS ever. It isn't even over yet and I need to complain about it.

Remember when McGee had a random girlfriend and she turned out to be the killer?

Remember when Abby had a new lab tech and he turned out to be the killer?

Remember when Tony dated that one chick that whole season and she turned out to be [spoiler redacted]?

My point is, this entire episode is about Ducky's new girlfriend, and GUESS WHO SHE TURNS OUT TO BE? Oh my god, this is so dumb. Ducky is a PSYCHOLOGIST. SURELY HE WOULD NOTICE IF HE WAS DATING A MURDERER. And then DRAMATIC SHATTERED MIRROR shots to represent HER FRACTURED SOUL. Oh my god this is the dumbest dumb that ever dumbed.

Anyway, because that is too dumb to complain about any more, we made a list of characters on NCIS who are allowed to have sex, from most sex to least sex:

Gibs: all he wants
Ziva: all she wants
Abbie: all she wants
Ducky: sure! why not?
McGee: Uh... well, I guess so. Why not?
Tony: No. Not until he learns not to be a douche. (Remember that season where he grew as a character? That was such a good season.) Unless it's with Tim or something. Then it's okay. Assuming he learns a lesson about not being a douche.

...I have no idea if Jimmy Palmer can have sex. I'm leaning toward no, as somehow 150 years into the show he is still 12.

Revenge 1x05

Are you watching Revenge? Why aren't you watching Revenge? It's so deliciously full of Revenge! Everything about it is magically delicious, particularly Emily Van Camp's hair.

Ringer

"I think this show is bad at exposition."
"I think this show is bad at everything except hiring Jason Dohring."

I mean, as long as Logan Echolls is there, looking hot in a button-up shirt, I'm going to watch. But ugh, this show is no Revenge.

The Vampire Diaries

Continues its streak of greatness! In last week's episode nearly every member of the cast died. (Some were resurrected, revived through CPR, or are vampires who can be murdered pretty freely.) This week a ghost came back, then almost immediately was banished forever. A good guy became a bad guy then became a good guy again THEN was turned evil. The bad brother is having to be the good guy and the good brother is now hilariously evil. And Caroline continues to be the greatest Caroline of all.

But here's what I really love about TVD: Elena, our heroine, on any other show would be awful. She's in love with a vampire; she believes True Love will reform him, she just wants to be a normal girl, blah blah blah, right? No. On TVD Elana gets herself into danger to lure her vampire boyfriend out.... so Ric can shoot him. Then, when he gets to be kind of snappy and snarky and rude to her, she FUCKING STABS HIM. While still being a sad teenage girl who loves her evil vampire boyfriend.

Bella Swan, eat your heart out.

Parks and Rec 4x04

That was the most perfect half hour of television I've ever seen, I think. I cried with laughter, then I got choked up with genuine affection for these people.

On a traditional sitcom Leslie's "Pawnee Goddesses" would have been competing with the boys group, and it would have been an escalating prank war. Instead, she's awesome and competent, and her little girls are awesome and amazing. They are awesome little people with opinions and ideas and they insist that Leslie be as great as she ought to be. Plus, Aziz Ansari's face is great, and I want to marry Ben Wyatt. His plotline left me hyperventilating and laughing so hard I cried.

I want a Gertrude Stein. And I want to live in this episode.

Community 3x04

That episode... Uh, it didn't work for me at all (with the exception of the tag. The tag was brilliant. I want to live in that tag.) There were a couple of laughs but that is not at all why I tune in. It's usually sharper, sassier, more ironic and winking and that felt like...

Okay, when you do a multiple universes episode (or a time loop episode) the joy is looking at what changed or what went differently each time. But almost everything repeated and the stuff that repeated mostly wasn't funny. Jeff banged his head. Annie was worried. They kissed or didn't. Britta got high. Shirley made a pie. Pierce mentioned that he banged Eartha Kitt. And... that was it. There was no deep revelation of what different permutations of the group showed, no wry pop-culture references, no jokes, even, really. The only timeline that was really funny was the one where everyone died, and they waited for the tag to really take that joke home. And I guess at the end they sort of implied that everyone's happier without Jeff, which is a joke we've seen before.

Can I just watch the adventures of Evil Troy and Evil Abed, please? They seem to be actually on the road to doing something and being funny.